


Cracks in the Wall

by eosaurora13



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Gen, Heavy Bucky Barnes Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1432075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eosaurora13/pseuds/eosaurora13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier's interactions with Steve on the bridge and the helicarrier start to chip away at the machine Bucky has become, slowly revealing the man underneath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cracks in the Wall

Crack.

“But I knew him.” Those words echo in your mind. You think you said them but you can’t remember why.

Crack.

The helicarrier breaks apart above you, a massive steel beam pinning you to the glass floor. Your shoulder dislocated, your metal arm functioning at less than half capacity, you can’t push the offending beam off. Despite how much you struggle, you know you are going to die.  
That’s okay.

Crack-  
Thud.

Two boots land on the glass. You close your eyes. Would your target ever give up? Leave me alone, you want to cry out but there isn’t enough air in your lungs. And you’re not quite sure what you mean by “me.”

Slinging his shield over his back, he groans in pain and digs in beside you and together—always together isn’t it?—you raise the beam enough for you to slide free. You scramble to your feet, never once taking your eyes off your target. That was weakness. That would give him an opening. 

He’s slightly hunched over, blood spilling out of the gunshot wound in his chest. A gunshot you gave him. The way he looks at you. It’s pure desperation. It means nothing to you. What is he to you?

What are you to him?

“You know me.” You can feel his grip on hope slipping. His shock and confusion and hurt from the bridge filters back into your mind and something inside you breaks. 

Crack.

“No, I don’t!” you scream. You launch yourself at him. Up goes his shield, blocking a well-aimed punch from your metal arm. The impact echoes against the backdrop of explosions and jars you, just for a second, before you’re back on your feet. You slam your target into a beam. He gasps as the air is forced from his lungs.

“You’ve known me your whole life,” he states again, trying to get something through to you. The fact that what he says has no effect when he so clearly hopes it will infuriates you. You lash out once more, slamming into him, pushing him away. You can’t hear any more from him. He just needs to SHUT UP! 

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

Crack.

No! Your mind fights what your target is telling you and you respond the only way you know how. You’d answer him with words but the only language you know is violence, violence that has been so deeply entrenched in your programming. 

You translate your inner turmoil into punches and kicks that he struggles now to block. Yet even through his pain—your pain—he still holds his own. But he backs off suddenly and you don’t follow. He stares at you, takes his mask off. The man from the bridge—he’d been your target before. You knew him then too.

Crack.

“I’m not going to fight you. You’re my friend.” He tosses his shield down. It falls with horrible finality into the Potomac hundreds of feet below.

You’re no one’s friend, a voice whispered in your ear. With a roar, you crash into your target, knocking him to the ground. Your fist connects with his face. “You’re my mission,” you grit out. One, two, three more times you punch him. Each time you leave his face bloodier, more bruised. 

He looks up at you, not with anger or hatred. No, the emotion in his eyes you don’t know. You’ve never seen it. He doesn’t speak your language. He doesn’t fight back. “Then finish it,” he managed to say, the effort clearly hurting him. “Cuz I’m with you to the end of the line.”

Crack!

You stare at him, horrified. Those words. You knew—no, you know—those words. In another life, you spoke them, placing a hand on your friend’s shoulder. The friend laid out and bleeding beneath your fists. No. It couldn’t be.

You don’t get a chance to react. The ship falls apart above your head and a tangled mess of metal crashed into the floor, shattering the glass. Your target—no, that’s not right—falls through amid wreckage and debris and you can only watch as his form gets smaller and smaller until he crashed into the water below.

You hang there, metal on metal, and stare. Your mission is to kill him. Let him drown and your mission is done. You look around you. Your mission is breaking apart above you, your master’s plan to reshape the world breaking along with it.

And you remember. You remember falling from the train against a backdrop of white and a voice calling out for you as you fall. It’s his voice. You glance down to where he fell and your path is clear.

You let go of the metal beam and follow the Captain into the water. And that’s what you always do, isn’t it? You will always follow him, even if you don’t know why.

With what strength you have left, you haul him from the water and drop him unceremoniously on the shore. A quick examination told you he still breathed but he was unconscious. His friends would find him; he would live.

What about you? you think as you walk away, looking back at his prone form one last time. No one was left to give you orders, not that you would follow them anymore. What else could they have lied about? If they knew about your target, that you knew him, why have you kill him? What was the point? What was the point of any of it?

Who are you?

He called you Bucky on the bridge. He called you friend. Captain America called you friend. Maybe if you found out more about him, you could discover who you were, who you were to him.

That’s your mission now.

* * *

You don’t know how many days pass but you find yourself in the Smithsonian, in the Captain America exhibit. Throngs of people mull around you but your focus isn’t on them. They are meaningless. No, you’re staring at a panel with your face plastered on it. You’re reading about your friend, Steve Rogers, and about your apparent death. Your target—Steve—hadn’t lied to you. Your memories, what few you could grasp, hadn’t lied to you.

Crack. Finally, a ray of light shines through the walls you’ve erected.

There’s hope for Bucky Barnes yet.


End file.
